Binging Netflixs, TV Habits and a Trip to Memory Lane

I don't watch a lot of television which is a stark change from my viewing habits before moving to this continuum care campus in 2021. Back in my other life I had three TVs---one in the bedroom, the living room and the kitchen---and often they'd all be turned on to mostly CNN from morning to night. To say I was a news junkie would be an understatement. And I loved the freedom of not having to sit in one place to watch something. I could do my housework, work on my computer or hobbies, be at the beck and call of my disabled husband and take care of life's other requirements without missing a thing on TV. 

There are several reasons why I no longer watch TV as much as I used to do. Aside from there being a lot of things to do on campus, liking going to a staff retirement party this afternoon and a Memorial Day presentation tomorrow, I hate the fact that we only have one TV hook up to the free cable aka they didn't wire the building so people can have cable TV in the bedrooms. If we want to pay $145 we can get an exterior cable strung around our living room and through the wall to the bedroom but I'd hate the visual of a cable going along the baseboard and up around the door frame. It seems too ghetto to me. So in the bedroom I have a TV with a modern version of the old rabbit ears but it has limited channels to watch and try as I might there is no way to set both TVs to the same program at the same time. At bedtime in my old life, I always watched the late night comedians but I can't do that here. So my bedroom TV has morphed into a binge-watching Netflix box. Question: Is it just me, or has Netflix been offering fewer new choices in the last couple of months? 

Currently I'm binging a show with four seasons and I'll polish off the last season this coming week so I’m looking for suggestions for another binge worthy series. I like political stuff like Madame Secretary and Designated Survivor, crime stuff like Black List, White Collar, The Recruit, Night Desk and Ozark. I love law series, too, like Suits and Your Honor. Sci-fi like Roswell and Lost. Quirky stuff like Shameless, In the Dark, Loudermilk, Hab and Lenard, Six Feet Under, North of North, This is Us and Dead to Me. I've also binged on more "normal" choices like Grey Anatomy, Bridgeton, Outlander, and Downton Abby. I say 'more normal choices" because, with the exception of Downton Abby, I've yet to find any of my fellow residents who have the same tastes in Netflixs that I do, and with regular TV I've only found one person who likes American Idol and Shark Tank which are the only shows besides cable news that I currently watch.

Though, it goes without saying that my Liberal Ladies, Tuesday night dinner companions and I all consume a lot of the same news shows. I love our Tuesday dinners. There are twelve of us with three others who would love to join us but we can't make reservations for more than twelve, so they fill in when someone can't make it. Speaking of large groups there are sixteen Catholics living here and recently I landed at a lunch table with five-six of them. They were bashing the new pope. It seems that before becoming the pope he criticized the moral fiber of the president. I had to bite my lip from asking how they can justify accepting a different standard of morality for 45/47 than they do for the common man on the street. Aren't we all supposed to do our best to follow the Ten Commandants and do on to others as we would have them do on to us? "The pope needs to stay in his own lane," one of the ladies said and I came close to saying, "I personally think the pope was voted in for precisely the reason you don't like him." The Catholic hierarchy sees the evil that Trump is spreading around the world and they want a pope who isn't afraid to challenge him. I doubt that all the Catholics living here are MAGAs, but at least six are. How they can admire 45/47 and bash the pope is beyond my understanding---all the while thinking of themselves as good Christians.

Back on Topic: My current binge worthy show is Good Girls. It reminds me of Ozark because the three women who are the lead characters find themselves getting dragged deeper and deeper into a life of crime only the show is billed as a comedy so it's lighter viewing than Ozark. My favorite character is Rio played by Manny Montana---a porn star name if I've ever heard one which I'm quick to admit that that's an area I know very little about. Linda Lovelace is the only name I can come up with and she must be as old as dirt by now. And dare I say our First Lady did her share of soft porn before she hooked The Donald. Anyway, there is something about Manny's gravelly voice or the way he moves that gets to me. He's a crime boss in the series so it's not the character he plays that I like and he's not what I'd call good especially looking either. God only knows why I like the guy but if you watch the video below and have a theory let me know. 

There's no smooth segway I can use to change the subject so I'll just do it. I've been walking down Memory Lane this past week. It all started when a great-nephew on my husband's side of the family reached out to me on Facebook. He wanted my address to send me an invitation to his daughter's graduation party. Mike was one of the few people who offered to help after Don's stroke and who actually followed through in a very real and meaningful way. He took on the volunteer role of being a 'personal guide' in a wheelchair hunter's group that I got Don involved in. It freed me up from doing it and it let Don do a 'guy thing' with other guys. Along with my address I sent him a couple of hunting related stories that I originally shared in a blog posts. He loved them and asked for more so I've been binge-reading old posts and feeding them to Mike who asked if he could share them with his older brother. Don was their favorite uncle and it's been nice, having Don come alive again.  ©

                              Short pool scene from Good Girls.

If you are already a fan of Good Girls, you'll like this longer mashup titled The Hotness of Beth and Rio

Operation Get My Mojo Back!

The other day when I lost it in Stretch and Flex class, bringing on a flow of tears that aren’t completely under control even today, I realized that I have a problem and I need a plan. A post-menopausal women can’t stay weepy this long without having “Aunt Flo” as an excuse, and a widow over two and a half years out can’t blame it all on lingering grief. (Well, she could but I’m almost sure that’s not the whole ball of wax entrapping me.) Something is wrong. The signs have been there since the Fourth of July weekend, ignored hoping my body and mind would self correct. Mild depression are the dirty little words I’m applying to the poor state of my grey matter. Gasp, I said it out loud! Well, not exactly but I did type it out.

When I was growing up there would be times when my mom played Solitaire over and over again. She’d pull up a red leather footstool and deal the cards, play the tricks, until I would go daffy watching her. I didn’t play the game myself until after my husband had his stroke. That’s when I bought a tiny deck of cards at a hospital gift shop and I carried it everywhere we went for the next 12 years. Spouses of disabled people spend a lot of time in waiting rooms. I became my mother only with a twist that, I thought, set me apart from the woman I didn’t understand growing up. I bought a book titled 101 Ways to Play Solitaire. Yes, I played the game that drove me daffy as a kid but I was learning 101 new ways to numb my brain, to turn it off so I didn’t have to have think about the serious issues going on in my life. Bottom line: This paragraph is leading up to another round of True Confusions: I’ve been on another binge of Solitaire the past few weeks. I should have picked up on that clue right away. I didn’t.

Clues number two, three, four and five: I’m not paying attention to nutrition, I’m on a sugar binge. I’m not getting enough physical exercise…or sleep. I’m not keeping my house as picked up and neat as usual. “Okay,” the right side of my brain said to my left side, “It’s time to climb the ladder back out of this hole you’re in. Go get your mojo back!” I say that as I kick myself for not going to a wedding at Niagara Falls that my whole family is attending this weekend. I could have used the break, even though it seemed like too much trouble, money and distance at the time I sent back my RSVP. Anyway, the two sides of my brain have worked out a plan to turn things around.

- Don’t drop out of those exercise classes I started at the senior hall last week. Great. I have two weeks to get in the habit of going then they are closing for two weeks to do yearly building maintenance.

- Quit buying sugar filled comfort foods!  Bad girls do that, good girls make kale chips.

- Good girls also sign up for the summer salads cooking class to use up the gift certificate I won last fall for the fancy chef’s school. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take place until the middle of August and unfortunately, a month ago I signed up for an ice cream social coming up on Tuesday. Ice cream is the mother lode of comfort foods for me. (Check this one off the list. I registered for the class in the middle of the last night.)

- Good girls also put their new high-tech, custom shoe orthotics to better use than just walking around the house. (Ohmygod, those things make a difference as they should for $250. My orthopedics doctor has them made and they require you to walk barefoot across a mat with sensors in it, making your feet glow up in bright neon colors on a computer screen.)

- Weed myself off from watching daybreak-to-bedtime news. Maybe I’ll pig out on the Hallmark movies---those sappy love stories with happy endings, but only after a widow or divorcee goes through hell after losing husband number one before husband number two shows up to save the day. Formula fiction, that usually ends with a wedding that the x-floral designer me can critique.

- Stay off the political debate sites. In other words tune out until the world leaders tune back in and do something constructive towards a more peaceful co-existence and/or my liberal soul doesn’t feel compelled to cry over all the injustices on earth. I can’t fix the world, I need to concentrate on fixing me.

- Take more sleeping pills. One every night for a week in an effort to reset my body clock should do the trick.

- Get a new computer chair that gives me more back support. Back pain is part of the reason I'm not sleeping well.

Well, there it is, my plan for Operation Get My Mojo Back. I hope it works. ©